As I look back on the last six months as an underemployed man of leisure, I realize that it mostly hasn't been all that leisurely.

OK, that isn't true. I've been busy, sure. But any lifestyle that affords me the time to channel-flip through the first rounds of March Madness while I'm folding laundry is pretty sweet. By New York standards, the pace of my life might classify me as legally dead.

The good news is that this time has worked out almost exactly the way I hoped it would, mostly because my primary role has been Dad. I've professed before that I really enjoy performing the day-to-day daddy duties much more than having to pay someone else to do them. And now that we're staggering the after-school antics, I get to learn many more specific things about each son that just can't penetrate when they're both clamoring for attention.

The even better news is that the Mom 2.0 Summit is less than a month away, and last fall they asked me to put together some dad-specific content, discussed by dad-specific dads. I've been motivated about this ever since the M3 Summit, and I feel lucky to have convinced several prominent dad bloggers to come to New Orleans and to help propagate the craft.

If you're on the fence about heading down to the Quarter, now is the time to act. As we finalize all the spots, it looks like we could shut down the registration page any time now.

I hope a lot of dads will come down next month and take part in this chance to invest some real effort into getting more eyeballs on more dadblogs. And if you can't come in April, I hope you'll follow the Twitter feeds and flickr streams and whatever else spews forth from the conference, so that we can all be ready for what's next.

Last weekend, the boys and I braved steady rain and steadier ennui to see Rango, in which a lot of cute little anthropomorphized critters stir up a lot of desert dust. It's directed by Gore Verbinski, and the similarities to his Pirates of the Caribbean franchise are legion--right down to Bill Nighy as the super-menacing Rattlesnake Jake, whose rattle is a Gatling gun. The action and rampant gunplay were a little much for TwoBert, and I fell asleep once. But the movie redeemed itself by engendering this conversation on the way home (much of TwoBert's dialogue is in all caps because HE COULD NOT STOP YELLING):

Me: So what did you guys think of the movie?

TwoBert: IT WAS SO AWESOME!

Robert: It was pretty cool, because of that snake that had a gun in his tail. Except, I have a question: How is he supposed to load it?

Me: Right! He can't hold the bullets, can he?

T: I know! He eats them and POOPS THEM OUT!

R: You can't eat bullets, [TwoBert].

T: YES YOU CAN BECAUSE IT'S A PRETEND MOVIE.

Me: Where does he get his bullets?

R: And how does he buy them? He doesn't have any pockets, so he doesn't have any money.

T: THEY GIVE THEM TO HIM BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF HIM.

Me: And how is he supposed to eat them?

T: HE PUTS THEM IN A BOWL BEFORE HE HAS A FIGHT.

R: That's stupid. You can't just poop right after you eat. How does he know he'll be ready to poop when the fight happens?

Me: True. He could come to a gunfight and not be ready to poop yet.

T: HE HAS THEM IN A BOWL FOR BREAKFAST, AND ALL THE FIGHTS ARE IN THE AFTERNOON.

Me: It sounds like he would have to do a lot of planning.

R: What if he ran out of bullets, but he was still trying to poop and actual poop came out?

T: THEN HE WOULD HAVE TO RUN AWAY.

[Pause.]

Me: You know, pooping out bullets probably hurts a lot after a while.

T: That's why he's always so ANGRY!

Say what you will about all those brilliant Pixar films, but none of them has ever provoked such a passionate, probing discussion of colorectal pyrotechnics. Advantage: Depp.

So it seems I took February off. Well, not necessarily "off," since anyone who works freelance knows that not having a full-time job is a full-time job. You find yourself saying "yes" to a lot of different things, because this is the time to Do! and Find! and Create! and Learn! And Earn! And Do It All By 3pm!

I brought this very point up to my mother the other day, and she said something along the lines of "Congratulations. You are now me." And it's kind of true. When you're the primary afternoon caregiver, everything you do is on the clock. And the speed with which six hours dissipates just plain buffaloes me every day. You sit down to attempt to do something (anything!) productive, and after you've taken some phone calls and made lunch and moved your goddamn car again, you've maybe stitched together a few sentences before it's time to pack it up and collect the spawn.

Earlier this year, I got a bit of an extension by enrolling the kids in after-school classes. Robert got very excited about fencing, and after a few disillusioned weeks when he found out it wasn't all about hacking your opponent to pieces like a marauding Visigoth, he took a shine to it. And TwoBert took, of all things, a capoeira class. Because if you aspire to have your child thrive as an international voleur, it's best to start 'em young.

Before the Midwinter Break, the kids had after-school on the same day, so I could pick them up at the same time. In the spring, however, we're trying something different and staggering the classes, so that one day a week each boy gets some one-on-one time with me. Their personalities and interests and palates have diverged so distinctly that each is sick to death of having to indulge the other in any form of compromise. So now, each gets an afternoon to lead me by the nose wherever he wants--be it the book store, the playground, the pizza joint, or the Priceless Jewel Exhibition up the street.

The conversations we have are each worthy of a separate post, because they are fascinating, and intricate, and fixed in the very specific logic of a developing brain. And they'd be perfect fodder for a documentary of the year I was dead broke and had everything I wanted.

Recently, I decided I needed more nonplussment in my life. I was blasé about a destabilized northern Africa. I shrugged off an America that doesn't punish financiers for credit-default swaps and predatory mortgage lending, yet wants to balance budgets on the backs of teachers. I was unmoved when my boy turned 9, halfway to that magic moment when he'll be eligible for Adult Prison.

I needed a reason to sleep even less every night. I needed more panic.

As if in answer to my pleas, an Angel in Fearmongering, who took the form of a marketing person at St. Martin's Press, asked me if I wouldn't mind writing something about Let's Panic About Babies!

For the sake of full disclosure, I am (as I keep telling people) a man. A father, in fact, who was there to watch both his children emerge from their mothernethers. Who agreed to a home birth for TwoBert, and wrote about it in spine-rending detail here, here, and here. I felt pretty enlightened about childhaving, considering that my dad spent my birth down the hall in a Don Draper costume, wreathed in pipe smoke.

I used to think childbirth was a redemptive miracle (despite its frequency). But after reading 266 pages about nausea and anguish and body image and distended vaginas and the relentless pressure on mothers to DO EVERYTHING RIGHT, I am now convinced that humans really should not ever procreate again. We should just tie all our tubes, bonk each other like crazy, and die out gracefully from beatific dehydration.

If you have a child, or are about to have a child, or ever were a child, you should read this book. And if you'd like a free copy, the Angel in Fearmongering has authorized me to give one away to a reader who leaves a comment between now and tomorrow, March 4, at noon Eastern. I'll choose the winner at random and have the book sent along ASAP.

Alice and Eden are probably my two oldest blog friends. They're the first two people I followed on Twitter, and the first two people I click on in my Google Reader. They're lovely in person and ridiculously talented on paper, and I couldn't be happier for all the success they're about to have. If they're coming to your town on their book tour, you should come bask in their genius and let them know their vaginas were not distended in vain.